Checkin’ The E-Mail
As Strongbad from Homestarrunner would say, "e-mail, the e-mail..." and it appears that the e-mail is getting a second set of legs. George Siemens encapsulated the last week or so fairly well, which got me thinking about what makes e-mail so durable. It's not a particularly friendly social tool - you have to know an address before you can make any sort of connection. It's not very searchable, as anyone who's had an e-mail for any amount of time, you probably also have a lot of junk, despite your best attempts to get your inbox to zero, which reminds me, why do we need to get the inbox to zero again? Why is it so bad to have e-mails unread?
I think the real hook for e-mail is that it's not complicated to use, the entry point for e-mail is really low. The idea around it is familiar, there's 20 years of history, and people who otherwise don't get the Internet and computers get e-mail. It's a perfect storm of a digital analogy that's gone right. So what can be learned from this?
First of all, don't try to create an e-mail killer, try to create an enhancement for e-mail. That's what Google has done with the prioritize feature (they learned that trying to create a killer ahem, of e-mail is not what people want). Sort it differently, view attachments inline, these are sense making tools that help. E-mail is an increasingly private activity, well, as private as plain text is, in a social web. People want a level of privacy in their lives, which e-mail can provide. Any e-mail killer (really, you shouldn't try to do this, but if you insist...) will have to have some privacy attached if you're going to get converts.
What I Learned This Week (Part 11)
Org flowchart for responding to comments on Facebook (or other social media): This blog post has been making the rounds, with good reason. Common sense often requires a flowchart.
David Carson, principle designer of Ray Gun magazine, talks about design: Not just about design, but the emotionality of design. I'm struck by his photographic style - which is a different piece all together, but I was particularly piqued by his statement about intuition, and how it's discounted in higher education. Also at the end of the talk is that people's experience is what makes a difference.
Another posting on the web that talks about the shift we're in the middle of (or behind the curve of, depending on who you listen to). I'm looking forward to the time that we have USB keys and teachers that share things digitally too.
Time’s 50 Best Websites
It's interesting to surf through the 50 best websites according to Time, not just because it's another view about what's good in the web, but it's also interesting to see how they pared untold billions of sites and pages down to 50. It's like saying name your top 3 punk 7" EPs - there's thousands of possible choices and lots of opinions, but narrowing it down is awful tough.
So looking at the sites Time likes for education there's two must-haves and pretty easy choices (Ted and MIT OpenCourseware). Two other choices, Livemocha makes sense, and is a great use of the web technology, and really accentuates informal learning. As does Chegg, the textbook rental service, who accentuate the social aspect of learning.
The last one, I went "huh". Read Print is a service that catalogs public domain books - which seem to be a lot of the same old available books in the public domain, which are available from iTunes, Amazon and a few other places where one might look for books before Read Print. Where Read Print gets it is the selection of quotes from author's works, where it's wrong is that these are HTML files with the companies advertising, which is also text links, at the top of the screen. Even if I wanted to read this on my Kindle or iPad (neither of which I own, but maybe I'd want to read it on my iPod Touch?) it would blow. I don't want to bash this site too much because I love the idea, but the question isn't top 50 website ideas you love. Is this among the best websites for education? I think Khan Academy or even Teacher Tube would be an interesting choice that would have stuff to write about rather than this ode to dead trees. I'd be interested in the number of texts that are available in the public domain. I'm sure that 1984 and Animal Farm are fairly common texts, and are apparently in the public domain, or maybe they aren't.
Usability and Images
Been thinking about online communities a lot the last few days - specifically thinking about what makes a successful community, and the aesthetics of the online environment that the community flourishes in. Take Facebook - probably the most successful online community website going. Now, one can argue that Facebook's design aesthetic is to get out of the way of the community's relationships... but perhaps it's not the design aesthetic at all. Maybe the aesthetic is irrelevant when the content is overwhelmingly useful to the end user. Previously, I and many other web designers had tried to ensure that if, as a designer, you wanted to build a website that encouraged community, that pictures of people should be there to enhance the connection users have to the site and to each other. Yesterday in a meeting I suggested that one "had to have pictures of people" in the header of a website, in that it helped humanize the experience. My hypothesis is that without those pictures, the experience becomes too sterile. The counter argument a colleague brought up was that a 2-D representation of a person does not mean that people feel more at home or in a community.
Then why do designers use pictures of people so often as a short cut to engage people? Is it because it's easy and a cue to users that people (of a certain stripe) are welcome here? Anyone have any studies that have looked at images of people and the user's effect?
What If….
So I've been complaining to anyone who'll listen about the plight of higher education, I guess I should offer a vision of what I want things to look like in the higher ed of my world. And yes, the trains run on time in my reality too.
1. Courses should be inquiry based, with curriculum flexible enough to accommodate such a move. As long as the core concepts are met, then everything else should be based on the curiosity of the student. If there's a lot of core concepts to cover, then split the course into two. What if that extends indefinitely? Well it can't - it's my reality. Oh all right, be critical. Is there a way that a core concept gets wrapped into other tasks? Creativity comes in handy here... the point is get the students interested in doing something and you've won. They'll learn, you'll learn and be amazed with whatever they do. I can guarantee it. But the teacher in the equation has to be able to motivate, and pique that curiosity.
2. Mandatory courses like maths and communications should be folded into each course - so there's no more "irrelevant" courses. Sure, we all know that a good communication course is worth it's weight in gold. Of course, we recognize that after working with someone who couldn't communicate their way out of a wet paper bag. Some of these basic, soft skills can be taught online with profs acting as tutors. Or better still, make sure the students have those skill before setting foot in a classroom.
3. Speaking of classrooms, keep them. Don't for one minute think that you can do away with them. Students, faculty, hell, people love places to congregate and talk with others about whatever excites them. And sometimes that's not the subject you're teaching in class. Oh well. Those social connections are crucial.
4. Be kind to faculty who do a good job, work hard and devote a lot of effort and work to make things good for the student. It's not always about pay, sometimes it's as simple as recognition. This is so easy to do, and rarely is it done. Why? Why have I seen several people who were great teachers leave the profession? Because they can't make ends meet or they have a sense that it will never get better for them as there's so many people in front of them in the seniority list. Or, even worse, they see the politics in the way and have no real hold out for hope.
5. Tie tuition costs to cost of living and subsidize the rest through governments of all levels. It's a shame that we're running higher education into the ground with the idea that we're churning out a commodity rather than empowering people. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd say of course they don't want you to think, just to make better widgets on the line... but that's too cynical for even me. At least I hope....
Corporatization of Higher Education
Courtesy of a Stephen Downes tweet, I came across this posting about College Inc., which really crystallizes a lot of what I'm finding wrong about working in Higher Education right now. Sure, I see the need to ensure that we aren't undertaking massive deficits, I also think that we have a moral imperative to educate people. Higher Education is not a business. I dislike the economic side of things, and sure I might be idealistic, but we can afford to spend billions on a summit that doesn't appear to do anything except appease the richest 20 countries in the world, but of course, we can't afford to have schools run at a deficit? Why, again? The cost of running schools are dropping (computer infrastructure is cheaper than ever, textbooks can be cheaper too) so why aren't we able to do this? I know so many dedicated teachers, who spend probably 500 hours of their own time learning new things not because they want to, but because they're passionate about teaching. So again, Provincial government, why? Maybe I should ask the Federal government? Oh, yeah, that's why we can't get straight answers... bureaucracy.
Be All and Goog-All
A new study is indicating that students trust Google too much - assigning it too much trust to it's ranking algorithm. I frankly don't see the problem with this, seeing as it's crucial to Google's ranking scheme - Google is based on reputation. So the results you get have to be somewhat right otherwise you'll turn somewhere else, that was the problem with Altavista and other search engines circa 1997, the ranking schemes weren't trustworthy. It seems to me that the authors of the study might have missed that point, or maybe the brief didn't spell out that issue in full detail (being brief and all). Of course people trust Google, it's right most of the time. What the article should be looking at is if it's the correct answer. It would be interesting if in this data if Google did return unreliable results... that might be useful. Seeing as Google's main factors in ranking are essentially crowdsourced, it might be some evidence of the wisdom of crowds.
After a bit of searching, and looking at the previous works of the author, it seems that despite previous knowledge of the subject, that she's missed a big piece of the puzzle. In the previous piece she's dismissed that search engine use has been generally measured by folks like Danny Sullivan who's been tracking that sort of information for years. If you cross reference Sullivan's work with the two or three other measuring sticks and the reported use from the sites themselves you get a good picture that Sullivan is pretty close with his findings. Again, trust built up over years of work, I trust Sullivan's results. Lots of other people do as well, there's a reason he's the guy to go to when you want numbers about the web.
The premise is correct though, people need to be more critical about the media they're consuming and sure there's a slippery slope concerning the dominant culture overwriting less dominating culture (specifically cultures that have a minimal web presence). Just seems that the issue could've been dealt with deeper. It'll be interesting to read the study when it becomes available.
Journalism and Social Media
I've been thinking a lot about journalism, the celebrification of journalists, social media and the amateur celebrity. Now, you're probably all familiar with the first three, but the last concept has been half-baked in my head for a while, help clarify it if you can. The amateur celebrity is the person who attains some status from social media - I'm one, you're one, we're all one if you're publishing on the Internet. There needs to be some distinction between the producers and remixers of content, the pure recyclers of content (usually those who just post links without commentary) and the consumers. I don't think there's anything wrong with pure consumers - not everyone has something to add to a discussion, although that doesn't stop them from putting in their two cents regardless. I think the act of publishing and producing content, even remixing content, is very close to what journalists do - take a remix for instance. One takes existing content, puts their own spin on it and publishes. Isn't that what an editor does when publishing for a newspaper or online source? Take the written piece, select an appropriate image from one of a several news wire service, maybe tweak the written bit to fit for space and style...
So what separates journalism from social media publishing? Accountability, research, time... certainly a lot of the blogs I read put in many hours just to publish a couple paragraphs, the owners of those blogs have a reputation and have an expertise in the subject, so what's the difference? It's hard to say, but it's got to be a fundamental reason that newspapers are down as well as other traditional media.
Social Media as Marketing Tool (Yuck)
I'm tired of puff pieces about using Social Media as marketing for higher education. While this article/interview isn't bad, in fact it's pretty good, it exposes a glaring flaw in a lot of the logic of marketers. Hardly anyone in higher education is doing anything remotely clever with social media, certainly not on the scale of what some mass media advertising has done, so why are we even talking about it? Because it's a fad? A talking point full of me-toos? Who cares? Maybe this is a side effect of technology envy, where the newest and greatest gadget needs to be used in some fake way to ensure we're cutting edge. I, and most other students would, prefer to see these social media tools in action - maybe in say the classroom? Isn't using social media in a introductory way without having any classroom presence disingenuous and misleading? Hell yeah it is.
Mechanical Reproduction of the Internet
I've been reading Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (PDF) as a part of the Communication studies class I'm taking at Athabasca. It's dense, but makes a lot of sense to me. Particularly his writing about film, and how anyone can be an "actor" in film, sometimes by accident even. Certainly that might have been the case in the 1920's, but as further commercialization of the film industry occurred, less people and more "actors" appear in constructed states. Sure, documentaries are different, but the expectation of reality in a documentary is much higher than a film. To me, this is the same sort of premise that YouTube and video sharing sites get people to contribute content - even you can be the object of attention on YouTube. I see parallels between early film and online video, with a big exception - online video has years of experience with video and film to draw upon so it's been getting quicker up to speed. Online video where everyone can be an actor is slowly giving way to online actor, but without an audience. Celebrity and online personas are becoming big business, which means as soon as advertising figures out how to get their products placed, and I'm sure they have already figured it out, they'll really start investing in the folks who are online. I've seen my kid, who is an online producer and re-producer, scrutinize someone else's room online as well as look for clues as to who a person is through their videos. This is advertising at it's best, getting that word of mouth without paying a dime in ads.
In many ways, advertisers haven't had to cajole or convince us, we often do the promotion for them. I talk fondly of Desire2Learn, who haven't paid me to say so, but I do so because I think their product is superior to Blackboard. No one convinced me to say that. At least I think no one convinced me to say that. Or write that. Oh... slippery slope here I go!
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Blogroll
- A List Apart
- Bava Tuesdays / Jim Groom
- Clay Shirky's Internet Writings
- Connectivism
- Educational Technology.ca / Alec Couros
- Elearnspace / George Siemens
- Howard Rheingold
- Presentation Zen / Garr Reynolds
- The Ed Rush / Ed Webb